Vonetta Flowers is a prime example of how, if at first you don't succeed, you should . . . try at something else.
The Alabama-born athlete was a star in track and field - sprinting and long jumping, to be precise - at the University of Alabama, but she failed to make the U.S. Olympic track team. Undeterred, she simply turned to another sport - a winter sport, something one does not associate with the American South.
In the case of Vonetta Flowers, that winter sport was bobsledding, where she became a brakewoman. She made history in the process; as part of a two-woman bobsled team (along with Jill Bakken), she won the gold medal in that event, becoming the first black person of any country to win a winter Olympic gold medal. :-)
She also won the bronze medal in the two-woman event at the 2004 FIBT World Championships with partner Jean Racine Prahm in Königsee, Germany.
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